Posted on 02/27/2015 7:53:40 AM PST by SeekAndFind
In many fields, graduate degrees offer distinct benefits for your extra years in school.
Employees armed with a graduate education are often a more attractive hire and can make a higher salary than colleagues who have only a bachelor's degree.
However, for some industries the benefits of going to graduate school are comparatively low and don't justify the extra investment.
Using the recent "Hard Times" report from the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce, we examined salary and unemployment data of experienced college graduates and experienced holders of graduate degrees. These are workers whose ages range from 35 to 54.
For roughly 50 fields, we calculated how much more money a graduate degree would bring and the difference in unemployment rates for those with a post-college degree. These figures were then combined to determine which graduate degrees were the most "useless" — basically, which give you the smallest boost in salary and employment.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
My son-in-law is a graphic designer for a phone company in Wyoming. He makes very good money.
I’ll second that.
I copped the elusive BA in Journalism and went on to be a coal salesman.
Graduated with a degree in philosophy 35 years ago.
Never eaten at the public trough. Never unemployed involuntarily.
Will retire comfortably prior to being able to collect any SS.
It’s not the degree, it’s what you do with it that matters.
Both my daughters have essentially the same degree you have. Both are working in the animation industry and doing very well. They have peers who went to fancy 4-year schools who have $120,000 in student loan debt. My daughters have none.
I think that is too broad a group to make that claim. Most engineers (but not all) won't get enough difference in pay for the delay in receiving a pay check and future raises.
From my perspective and work history, the BS generates significant pay and a MS makes little difference. It will help in some areas, but in many, the first year of experiences generates enough pay increase to about match the increase in pay for a Masters with no experience.
My question is:
How can earning +/-15% more per year over a 30 year career make a graduate degree “useless”?
Even assuming only a $12,000 per year average difference puts the graduate degree holder $360,000 up in life-time earnings.
That might be nothing to a sports star or a billionaire software company owner, but to a “regular person” it’s quite a lot of money.
Thanks for the info. Then if it’s not the degree that matters but what you do with it, then that comes back to concepts such as having the initiative and drive to work hard and get ahead.
And this reminds us all that nobody is handing any of us anything on a silver platter. You do have to work to achieve things in life.
Hmmm, BusinessInsider, one of the voices of corporate weaseldom.
Notable that grad degrees for hard STEM subjects like CIS, Engineering, are deemed to be useless. Maybe that explains why there are so many long time STEM employees out of work while the grad schools in those areas of study are increasingly filled by foreign students who move from graduation ceremony to H1B workers in those fields almost immediately.
They push for hiring and raising quotas for H1Bs with U.S. residence established and graduate degrees obtained while encouraging U.S. citizens to stick with the education they have.
If those peeps are too stupid to figure it out going in, too bad for them. There should be at least some minimum amount of analysis by the student as to what area to get degreed. This analysis should include projected jobs and need for that degree on the backside. If no analysis, or if some, and still choose stupidly, no tears shed for them.
Wait....Are you saying that a Master degree in Wymnns Studies and Lesbian Street Puppetry is useless?
Well, what about the Code Pink Walking and Talking Vaginas? I thought they were pulling down big bucks and doing socially significant... Uh things or something. MSM told me so.
;>)
Our current company renamed the VP of HR to “Chief People’s Officer”...just PC speak for head chopper.
LMAO! What the hell does this mean?
“Shocker. In my experience over 20 years at 4 different companies I find all HR people, regardless of degree, completely useless.”
Yeah, but you don’t understand the true value of HR people to the company, namely their sole job is to ward off lawsuits, and in point of fact, despite the moderately popular perception that HR people are there to “help” the employees, in reality HR people are the corporate bulwarks erected to inculcate management against contact with employees, and HR is the REAL enemy of all corporate employees everywhere. HR is essentially management’s anti-employee shield.
The most valuable HR employees are black because they can fire useless afirmative-action troublemakers with much less blow-back than a white HR employee can.
Oh yeah? You think it's easy for these angry women to sit in their cubicles dreaming up reasons to reject experienced white men for employment while searching for perfect Trans-Gendered Lesbian/Gay Asian, African-American Felon Native American HB1 candidates with Anger Management Certification?
Oh No, HR "people" are the very backbone of corporate America, the Civil service, and Academia!! In fact, Mr. Wyatt, while your qualifications and work history are quite impressive, we are unable to offer you employment at this time.
Model HR Candidates for anything: Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. (or II), or Michelle Robinson Obama.
My degree was in French lit. Worked as a programmer all my career...did very well with it.
Highly misleading title. Many of the “useless” graduate degrees are common for people moving into very high-paying second careers (computer science, engineering, etc.). Look, if you spent 10 years with a BBA or a teaching degree or whatever, and decided you could be an engineer or a computer programmer, you’re going to get a graduate degree, instead of a second bachelor’s because it probably involves *fewer* courses. I got an MIS with only 16 courses; a CS major would have been 19, and could have been 24 for someone else.
But here’s the thing: that CS major with 24 courses and experience and who went away to the best school for undergrad instead of the nearest/cheapest night school is going to be making more money, and for good reason. But getting a graduate degree is still a great move in these fields.
Comparably, if you got an undergrad in psychology or even some sciences like biology, you’ll be making diddly squat. But if you got an advanced degree, you COULD be making a lot: an undergrad in sociology, psychology, or even biology is worthless. A graduate degree in one of those subjects likely means you are a professional, and therefore making good money. (Or are a dirt-poor adjunct professor...)
“Notable that grad degrees for hard STEM subjects like CIS, Engineering, are deemed to be useless.”
Yeah, this is one of the most confusing and useless articles I’ve ever seen. They seem to pick 10 VERY useful degrees, show some numbers, don’t compare those numbers to truly useless degrees, and then draw no conclusion. Furthermore, they’re apparently lumping together Masters and PhD degrees.
I don’t see the point of the article.
Sell advertising by having people click on the article based upon the title and not the content.
Typical Business Insider article.
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